The coming shape of 2014.

About three years ago, I compared the ongoing plunge in any belief in global warming as being akin to the death of a belief system. In essence, it is a five stage process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. It covered what can only be termed the true believers, not the politicians, or the crooks simply riding the gravy train nor establishment climate science, which is just hanging on in there to protect its research funding.

While different people go through the main sequence at their own rates, I think it’s a fair assessment that the majority of true believers are well through the denial stage. The successive disasters of last year such as the utter failure of COP19, the chopping back of subsidies, the culling of environmental journalists, the Australian electoral rout and the debacle of AR5, can have left no doubt in even the most ardent believer that the cause had lost both popular and political traction.

By the start of last year they’d mostly transitioned deep into the anger phase and that was the explanation for most of their blunders and bizarre outbursts. You can expect to see a lot more of the same this year as well as a jacking up of the alarmist propaganda to unheard of levels. Like an attention-seeking child that people have begun to ignore, they’ll ramp up the message to frankly ridiculous levels, giving the skeptic blogs many opportunities to deploy the humour weapon. They will eventually realise that strategy is actually doing more harm than good to their credibility and begin the transition into the bargaining phase.

That transition will be further hurried along by an emergent pattern of last year. The skeptic viewpoint started to be aired in the mainstream media, with several articles in leading mass circulation publications in America, Europe and Australia. Given the excesses of the movement which was above criticism in its glory days, there’s a lot of easy and juicy scoops to be unearthed by any enterprising journalist.

As more skeptic articles get published, it’ll become necessary for the alarmists to publish rebuttal pieces, which I suppose is the start of some dialogue. Essentially, that’ll be the indirect beginning of the bargaining phase but it will be extremely unlikely to succeed for a variety of reasons. A minor one is that climate science has patently let them down in terms of living up to its predictions so they’ve got nothing to bargain with, but the major reason is the intractable nature of all fanatics. Since they are incapable of compromise and the realists, by now having the initiative, have no need to strike bargains with an opposition which is in full retreat anyway.

There’s a saying; the only thing worse than selling out is wanting to and finding that nobody is interested in buying. At that point, the fanatics of the global warming cult can then be expected to enter the depression and acceptance stages. Apart from providing some basis for opportunist propaganda on our part, they’re already pretty much irrelevant.

Is that the end of the climate wars then?

No, I’m afraid not because the single remaining demographic we’ve got left to beat is going to be the most intractable. The fanatics finished themselves off, the skeptic blogosphere did for the credibility of climate science and the politicians know that green policies are now toxic with the electorate. The last opposition is the people and institutions who truly believe in one single thing – making lots of money from green policies. They’re clamped hard onto that sweet money teat and will take some prising off it.

That demographic breaks down into three groupings. The first is climate research, which without the lavish funding, is looking at what geologists call an extinction level event, but as their money flows from governments which are increasingly distancing themselves from what is not only a financial money pit but deeply out of favour with the voter, that situation is already taken care of. Think about it, how many voters would actually give a rat’s ass about cuts in climate research funding?

The second grouping is that plethora of so-called environmental organisations such as WWF and Greenpeace whose financial existence depends to a large extent on generous handouts from governments and bodies like the EU.

The final grouping is all those individuals and companies making money hand over fist via massively generous subsidies, tax breaks and seed capital. Again, the source of the funds is overwhelmingly government. What governments are finding out is that it’s simply no longer affordable to subsidise things like renewables, especially when the resultant escalation in energy prices is forcing industry to relocate to more business friendly countries.

The common factor they all share is a dependence on government largesse, and since that’s totally reliant on the support of elected politicians, that’s the axis of attack we have to use. There’s no utility in engaging in any significant way with those groups because trying to persuade anyone out of their source of income is obviously doomed to be a waste of effort.

The pressure has to be exerted on the politicians because they’re the only ones who can turn off the money tap to all three groups. How that’s to be done is to seek to encourage the popular perception that environmental policies are actually bad things. The particular way that’s to be accomplished comes down to where you or your organisation fit into the skeptic landscape. I’m a skeptic blogger so my blogging efforts this year will be focused on that strategic objective.

There are a lot of real issues the ordinary person can easily relate to without knowing any science, climate or otherwise. Some obvious areas are sky-rocketing utility bills, fuel poverty, bird chopping windmills, solar panels that just don’t work, rich fat cats gorging out on subsidies, multi-million dollar failures like Solyndra, EPA fraud running into the millions and there are lots more viable targets.

Repeatedly beating the hell out of opponents who are already bested is a waste of your energy. It’s the ones still standing you have to go after.

I’m making very good progress with the concept “regulatory capture”. This is especially good in the US where we are making progress with ending Drug Prohibition and my friends on the left see that the people in the fight for decades are losing out to the Johnny Come Latelys because of the regulations in the new market.

I don’t know about bargaining and compromising with these charlatans but there most certainly will be some creative acrobatics being displayed in the coming months.
Over night another wheel on the gravy train fell off.
From news com. today.
” BREKKIE WRAP: THE Sun’s activity has plummeted to a century low, baffling scientists and possibly heralding a new mini-Ice Age.

“I’ve been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” said one scientist.
Experts are compare the “sleeping” sun to the latter half of the 17th Century, when the sun went through an extremely quiet phase referred to as the Maunder Minimum. That era of solar inactivity caused bitterly cold winters in Europe described as a “mini-Ice Age”, where the Baltic Sea and London’s River Thames froze over.

Crap..here in Sweden the tap is fully open still..maybe the new EU directives will force our gov to back off a little…but its electionyear and evryone is geener then ever…but after september they have four years to get realistic about it.. :-)

I’m thinking there might be cultural and economic factors at work there (Denmark also maybe) that will put Sweden in a last stronghold group. Hopefully collapse of economic positives will bring a rude awakening before too long.

One other constituency we shouldn’t forget are the Global Warming mercenaries, the professional activists of the Green/Left, those unpleasant types who can only find meaning in their lives by telling others what to do, and generally messing with them.

They will continue to plague the free thinkers and doers of the world for a long time to come, with their mantram of “If you can’t join them, beat them.”

Stylish handling of the ‘abusive petals’ there Leigh. Would that I had the skills to enter such a snake pit.
Interestingly I sensed a certain desperation in some of the abuse you took, which I suspect is tied to the sense of betrayal I alluded to earlier.

Not a bad analysis Pointman. Prising the institutional limpets off the ship of public finances will be quite a challenge. Conventional wisdom is that budgetary cycles take 3–5 years to make significant changes. As the urgency of getting rid of the barnacles is high this will take considerable courageous decision making by politicians who need to be pressured or supported as required. As noted by hazze there may be countries that move at different speeds. With luck though the sustained pressure may bring about a catastrophic failure of the Global Warming structure.

THE Sun’s activity has plummeted to a century low, baffling scientists and possibly heralding a new mini-Ice Age.

“I’ve been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” said one scientist.

Experts are compare the “sleeping” sun to the latter half of the 17th Century, when the sun went through an extremely quiet phase referred to as the Maunder Minimum. That era of solar inactivity caused bitterly cold winters in Europe described as a “mini-Ice Age”, where the Baltic Sea and London’s River Thames froze over.

This story, attributed to no journalist, quoting a nameless scientist and allowing for no comment, heads a column of stories and links on all manner of subjects. It’s a mere chink of light in the breached wall of climate alarmism, but it does indicate that the tide is beginning to turn – ripple by ripple.

I agree with you completely. That is why for over a year now I write to influential politicians pointing out the flaws in such policies as requiring industry to support the “national greenhouse gas reporting system” (NGRS) and the renewable energy target (RET). And I will continue to engage clowns like Greg Hunt whenever he will respond.

It just occurred to me that belief in CAGW is just an example of the biggest ever case of mass hysteria. Like the Salem Witch trials. I don’t suppose Wikipedia will allow me to add it to their list:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria

I wish I could be so sanguine about the prospect of this sick cult ending. I’ve spent some of today trying to argue scientifically (as a layman but using researched evidence) with the eco-zealots on a Facebook climate alarm page. I say ‘trying’ because no argument, however measured and based on readily available ‘real’ evidence, is even addressed or admitted for consideration. Most of the response is pure abuse and comes up indiscriminately like flak. This is nothing new but I have to confess to being worn out by it all. I’m old and have seen this craze grow throughout my lifetime. I know it’s as nuts as tulip mania was or as was the terror of the imminent Last Judgement around 1000AD.

We are dealing with deep psychological urges and needs here, over which reason and argument have no real power. The ideas which drove the enlightenment are sadly dying. Post-modern science and philosophy have done for that and we are returning to a much more medieval mindset, in which we dissenters are simply heretics to be punished for even thinking differently from these sad deluded cultists. The saddest part is that true science is dying too.

The Greens’ pronouncements on removing sceptics from office this week show that the witch-burning thinking of the 17th century is still present in these people (and the 10:10 video of killing sceptics and their kids showed how far they’re prepared to let their wish-fulfilment fantasies run). I don’t think that thinking will disappear in a hurry, especially as it’s now embedded in politicians of all parties via outfits like Common Purpose and, above all, the EU. Tired of fighting but I don’t know what else I can do. I like to think it’s better to die on one’s feet than on one’s knees.

skeptics are still under the delusion that there is a science debate.
taxpayers are girls who can’t say no.
voters are beaten wives who won’t press any charges and who tell themselves things will change next time.

and there still is no climate conman’s head on a post, after all these years.

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